The return to Vought Tower was a silent, grim procession. We touched down on the helipad, Wraith stumbling away to medical, shell-shocked and babbling about inverted gravity and tombs of dead gods. Noir vanished without a word, a ghost returning to his master. I was left alone, standing on the polished concrete, the solid-state drive a burning coal in my pocket.
I didn't go to Mallory. I didn't go to Edgar.
I went straight to Homelander's private suite.
The doors were reinforced steel, designed to withstand a tank round. I didn't knock. I placed my palm against the metal and focused, not with brute force, but with Graviton's precision. I increased the molecular density of the air in the locking mechanism until it fused into a solid, unbreakable mass. Then I pushed. The door tore from its hinges with a shriek of tortured metal, crashing inward.
Homelander was inside, standing by his floor-to-ceiling window, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. He didn't turn around.
"That was my favorite door," he said, his voice dangerously calm.
"The Aerie is gone," I said, my own voice flat, the cacophony in my head silenced by a cold, singular purpose. "Buried. On your orders."
"Collateral damage." He finally turned, his eyes glowing with a faint, crimson light. "A necessary cost to contain a security risk. The official report will say the unstable facility suffered a catastrophic containment failure. A tragedy. But you already know how this works, don't you?"
He took a slow sip of his drink, his gaze boring into me. "You were supposed to be in there. You and Edgar's little pet project. A clean sweep. But you... you just had to be difficult. You had to show off."
He took a step forward. The air in the room grew heavy, thick with his menace. "You inverted a mountain, Alex. That wasn't in your file. You're getting stronger. Absorbing more. That makes you more useful. And more dangerous."
"I'm not your weapon, John," I said, using his name for the first time. It was a deliberate act of defiance. A line in the sand.
His smile was a razor's edge. "Oh, but you are. Everything in this world is my weapon. The media, the politicians, the screaming fans... and you. You're just a fancier kind of hammer. And if a hammer gets a crack in it..." He tapped his glass. "...you get a new one."
"I have the Genesis Files," I said, pulling the drive from my pocket. "The unredacted truth about Subject Zero. About what was done to him. About the children who died to make you."
The smugness on his face didn't falter, but it became brittle. "And what do you think you'll do with that? Leak it? Who would believe you? I am the truth this world believes in."
"Not everyone." I met his gaze, and this time, I didn't look away. "This isn't a negotiation. This is a declaration. You stay out of my way, I stay out of yours. You try to bury me again, and I won't just invert a mountain. I'll tear this whole fucking empire down around your ears, and I'll make sure the world knows the man at the center of the rubble is a pathetic, manufactured god who was born in a test tube."
For a long moment, there was only silence. The pressure in the room intensified to the point where the windows began to vibrate. I could feel his heat vision building, a sun waiting to be born behind his eyes. I prepared my shields, my gravity field, every defense I had. This was it.
And then, he laughed.
It wasn't his usual performative chuckle. It was a raw, genuine sound of amusement. He threw his head back and laughed until he had to wipe a tear from his eye.
"Oh, kid," he wheezed. "You've got balls. I'll give you that. Alright. Fine. You want to play king of the hill? Let's play. But remember this moment when you're lying broken at the bottom, wondering how it all went so wrong."
He turned his back on me, a dismissal more absolute than any attack. "Get out of my sight. And get a new door installed. You're paying for it."
I left, the drive still in my hand, my heart hammering against my ribs. I had stared into the abyss, and for now, the abyss had blinked. But I had made a fatal miscalculation. I had challenged Homelander in private. I had given him the one thing he couldn't tolerate in public: a rival.
The war wasn't coming. It had just begun. And the first battle would be for the narrative.